


November 5, 2004

by motelsamndean (whalesandfails)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:55:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22358314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whalesandfails/pseuds/motelsamndean
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	November 5, 2004

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KloWinchester](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KloWinchester/gifts).



Sam heaved in a breath. Then another. He looked up at the residence tower in the dim moonlight. He couldn't believe he didn't see the signs earlier, how soft had he grown? He tried not to remember Dean with the weight of a tire iron in his palm. But Dean always followed him when his adrenaline spiked. Like a missing limb, his body knew to look for his brother's steely gaze in the dark when his heart pounded.  
Getting the tire iron had been hard, storing it somewhere where Brady wouldn't see was harder. Living on campus had its perks, but when you needed to store a mechanic's tool without even owning a car, excuses were hard to come by. He had tucked it between his bed and the wall, and hoped that Brady wouldn't move the furniture around before he could kill the damn ghost.  
Stanford was an old school, Sam wasn't surprised to find cold spots and flickering lights in nearly every romanesque building and courtyard. But when the spectres became malevolent - that's when he had to do something about it. He twisted the hefty metal rod in his palm, listened to it whistle through the air. "C'mon, c'mon" he muttered to himself. He bounced on his toes, the crisp night air seeping through his thin school hoodie.  
There - across the forum. An eerie form floated towards him, a woman in 1920s garb, pixie cut and pearls framing her sweet face. She didn't look terribly frightening, but by the way her right leg seemed to trail behind her even in death, and how her head lolled to one side heavily, he knew she hadn't died kindly. Her dress had a gaping gash ripped up one side, which he tried not to think about. Or how her eyes looked sadder than any he'd ever seen.  
"Gregory, darling, is that you?" She called. Sam didn't know what to say. If he should say anything at all. Was Gregory the one who did this? Did it matter?  
Sam swung the tire iron like a mallet, like an axe, right into the concrete under his feet. She flinched back, even though he hadn't aimed for her. The stone shattered, cracks splitting through the text written on it, but he knew what is said - "Sharon Wheely, 1901-1925, Lest Her Angels Keep Keener Eyes." Sam swung again, and the chunks of concrete revealed a small necklace of pearls amid the pebbles and dust. He picked it up and tried to clean it off.  
"I know you're cremated, Sharon." Sam spoke to her. She hadn't approached. Hadn't so much as tried to attack him. And he wondered, if maybe she wasn't a woman in white after all, if she didn't prey on any man who crossed her path. She looked like she was going to cock her head, but it just twitched where it rested limply against one shoulder.  
"Can you understand me?" He asked. The adrenaline was cooling in his gut, and his grip on the tire iron loosened, he rested it on the ground, one hand holding the shaft lightly.  
"Yes." She answered. And she looked devastated, but resigned. "They're imitation, you know."  
Sam held the pearls in his hands, felt the warmth and the smoothness of them. "I know." He answered, "so they'll burn."  
She tried to nod, but her head just fell forward, and she looked up at him through her lashes, translucent in the moonlight. Sam held her gaze. God - she looked like Jess, his classmate in economics level two. He'd only worked up the nerve to talk to her twice. And there was only six weeks left in the semester. But she had eyes like Dean's, and he couldn't help aching for her, a little bit of home in this place. Sharon's face was round and her blonde hair fell in soft waves to her chin. She didn't try to stop him.  
Sam wondered.  
He took a deep breath and looked up at the moon, half full in the sky. It had been a year and four months. Sixteen months. Almost five hundred days. He just missed Dean, he missed his other half. The moon was bright in the sky, and Sam wished it's reflection of sun would heat his cold bones, but it wasn't enough, just the right amount to dimly see by. His breath fanned out in front of his face, obscuring the moon partially. It looked like it always rested there, half in the sky. Sam had gotten used to being half of himself. Even among these books and nerds, a part of him was lost with Dean.  
He knew Dean would see the same moon, of course. But he imagined it was the other half illuminated in his brother's night sky. That together they'd be the brightest fathomable night, blotting out the stars. But Sam was here. And he'd made that choice. He wouldn't take Sharon's choice.  
"That guy...." Sam prompted.  
"Matt?" She asked. And Sam nodded, opened his mouth to speak, but she continued before he could. "There was a girl," Sharon shrugged, "I stopped him." The papers said Matt Younes had a busted nose and that someone had attacked him unprompted as he was walking home close to midnight last week; but if a girl had fled, she certainly wouldn’t wait around for the news agents to show up, and certainly wouldn’t listen to Matt’s self-absorbed monologue with bandages pressed tight to his face, no matter how satisfying that sight would be. Maybe… Sharon…  
It wasn't much, but it was answer enough. He heard Dad's voice in the back of his mind, telling him to salt and burn no matter what. But he also heard Dean's insistent murmurs, and it wasn't a voice, more a susurrus of sound that whispered through the trees. Dean's voice was the one thing he couldn't imagine; he didn't even dream about it, just those eyes, those freckles. But the wind picked up and his hair tickled his ears, and Sam thought maybe that was Dean's voice, this whole time. That November wind. Telling him to trust himself, telling him to have faith, telling him to believe in angels.  
"You haven't hurt anyone who didn't hurt someone else?"  
She lifted a dainty shoulder, her head rolled. She gestured to the stone fragments with a small hand, engagement ring catching in the moonlight. "There are no angels," she said, "only me."  
And Sam wasn't so sure. But he pocketed the pearls all the same. She looked ready to sprout wings of her own in the dim light, as pale and ethereal as she was.  
"Do you promise?" Sam asked. Didn't say the rest: do you promise to not hurt anyone forever? Do you promise to protect the people here? Do you promise that there are good things that come from death?  
She met his eyes, forced her head up onto her shoulders for a fraction of a second. But it was enough. Her gaze was steely and the air around him stirred and the trees rattled against each other and he could only hear his heart thumping but it was a resounding yes, yes, yes.  
"Okay, I'll find somewhere safe for these." He patted his pocket. He bent down to try and piece her memorial stone back together, but there was too many small debris chunks for him to do it, her hands nestled on top of the rock, too, but there wasn't much they could do.  
"It's okay," she said. "Have you seen Gregory? Is he stuck here, too?"  
Sam shook his head, he hadn't. And his research had only said that Gregory had disappeared on a train bound north after Sharon's death.  
"I'll find a safe place for these," Sam vowed again, couldn’t meet her eyes. He stood to go. He walked back to his dorm, and only glanced over his shoulder once he reached the door, but she was already gone. The tire iron was a welcome weight under his arm, but he had no need for it now. Still, he didn't feel ready to let it go. Dean had never touched it, but it felt like home. It wasn't even the same brand as the one they had in the back of Baby.  
Brady was already snoring when Sam wrangled the key into the lock and got ready for bed. He tucked the tire iron under his pillow, and it was a distortion under his head, dug into his temple and ear. But Sam had slept in far worse. Had also slept in far better. Tried not to think about the overwhelming safety that came with being tucked under his brother's arm with Dad's loud snoring shaking the shabby motel room. Of camping under the stars, of the way Dean looked in deep dark forests (like a God, like a wraith, like a boy).  
He tried to see the moon out of his dorm window, but he could only see the light reflecting off the building on the other side of the quad. A reflection of a reflection. Sam had never felt more alone.  
\--  
Dean tried to blow life back into his fingers, but they were stark white from the cold. Like the snow that piled in drifts around the small cabin, luminous in the moonlight. Out of the four campers that had crashed here last week when the snow began to fall, only two survived. Dean wasn’t sure who the ghost was, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t demons or a wendigo or some other forest wraith. He thought maybe in the morning he’d just burn the whole cabin down. Then his hands wouldn’t be so cold.  
Baby was two miles down the slope, and she didn’t like Washington state any more than he did, given from the chunks of ice and snow that had accumulated in his grill as he drove north. He had lost service eighty miles back, Mount Baker was more an obstruction on the horizon than a peak in the distance. He was so close to the Canadian border he thought of paying a visit up north when he was done. Nothing was stopping him. Nobody was waiting for his call if he left cell reception for a while.  
Dean heaved in a sigh, tried not to focus on the silence of the woods at night. How the crunch of his footsteps was quiet among the trees. All the prints had been from police and news agents last week, and he slid a few times as he scaled the slope, had blooming patches of ice and mud on his knees as evidence.  
He clicked on a flashlight and approached the cabin in the dim light of the beam, made a circuitous route around the building, ticking off lists of tasks as he went, trying to figure out how to best approach it. The shingles were missing in spots, and vermin eyes glowed from between exposed rafters. He could barely see the evidence left behind from the police crew and the terrified civilians; a broken window, a blood-smeared doorframe, packs left piled near a large, towering pine. Dean rooted through them first, but only found clothes in a size two small and some expired camp food. The sleeping bags were crappier than his and they had a tarp for a tent. No wonder they jumped at the opportunity for shelter.  
The door to the cabin was ominous and uninviting, but Dean strode through the entrance all the same. His breath fanned in front of his face, clearer than it was outside. Definitely ghostly.  
“Hello?” He called out tentatively, scanning the room.  
There wasn’t much in the way of amenities, only a ratty chair and a fireplace. There was some evidence of the grisly murders that had taken place here last week, handprints smeared in red on the walls, fingernail gouges in the rotting plywood, curtains in tatters against the broken window like someone had clung to them for dear life. But Dean was more than comfortable with the gruesome furnishings, and he wondered what that said about him. The wind echoed through the space but it was surprisingly dry, there was no sign of the damp mildew that often permeated places like this. He wondered if it was from the fire the campers had lit or if its spectral company deterred even mold and mites.  
Dean was about to remove his duffel from his shoulder when he caught a moving shadow in the corner of his eye. He spun, whipped out and fired a shotgun loaded with salt as the thing came at him. A single round echoed, but after the ghost had flung him against the nearest wall. The supporting beams crumpled beneath his weight, but when he hit the brick of the fireplace his breath came out of his chest in a startled gasp. His flashlight clattered to the ground and the room fell into darkness.  
“Oh, fuck this.”  
He reached one hand into his bag blindly, feeling for both lighter fluid and salt. The ghost had disappeared, but he wasn’t sure where to, there was only twenty square feet of space to hide.  
Dean managed to spray lighter fluid in a few wide arcs around the room before he was knocked to the ground from the side. He fumbled with the trigger of the gun and aimed blindly upwards.  
He missed, again. The ghost (for it was definitely a ghost, this at least he knew) dragged him across the floor, and he hissed in a breath as splinters dug into his cheek and hips.  
He could feel a pressing weight over top of him, and something was forcing his skull into the old wood floorboards. Ow, he thought. It whispered into his ear “where is she?” in a breathy voice that made his skin crawl. Then the weight suddenly disappeared. Dean got up as fast as he could, shuffled around until his foot hit the cardboard carton of salt, knelt down to pick it up. His eyes were adjusting, but he couldn’t tell shadow from wraith, decided to salt and burn as quickly as he could. Fuck if the bones were actually here, he was too far from civilization, too far from Baby, too far from anything for this.  
The salt looked odd and white as it sprayed onto the floor, almost like spray-paint, glowing in the dark, stark in the gloom. Dean began backing out of the room. His heel hit the doorframe as the ghost appeared on the opposite side of the room, near the ratty chair.  
“I could sense her,” the ghost said. “And nobody was listening, or helping me get to her.” The air around it vibrated as it suddenly shouted, “take me to her!”  
“I don’t know who you’re talking about, sixth sense” Dean sneered back. He flicked his lighter open. His hands only shook slightly as the spectre seemed like it was planning to rush towards him.  
“My Sharon.” And it seemed to deflate, and sink towards the ground, settled into the chair. Dean recognized it as a young man, and it reminded him of Sam. He was rail thin and taller than Dean, mop of hair over his forehead. His suit was wrinkled, and that would be a Sam question – knowing what era it was from. Only the most common girl’s name ever, Dean rolled his eyes, ignited the shabby curtains. He stepped out of the doorway, keeping an eye on the ghost all the time.  
He didn’t know what made him call out. “Hey, what’s your name?” Maybe it was that he was out of the line of fire. Maybe it was the way the man’s eyes reminded Dean of Sam, how they pleaded and begged. Maybe he just missed people, missed talking to someone, anyone. Maybe he was going crazy.  
“Gregory,” he responded. “I couldn’t live in a world without my Sharon.” He looked up at the eaves, and Dean followed his gaze, saw the frayed rope among the rafters. The ghost didn’t budge as he started to ripple and curl at the edges like burning paper. Guess his bones were here. Somewhere. How apt, Dean thought, that I would watch a building burn and a love with it in November. He just fucking missed Sam, that was all. But he wouldn’t drive down to Palo Alto and take that choice from his brother – not yet. Maybe not ever.  
He watched the building go up, brighter than the moonlight. But he could see the moon among the trees. Was this living? Was this all Dean got to see? Burning lost souls and skies so wide they were made for two sets of searching gazes and not one? The moon looked sad and lonely in the sky, and he wished it were Sam. Like the tides, Dean felt stretched taught, the push and pull of the most beautiful thing in the solar system causing a whole world of turbulence. He scowled at the night sky – vindictive, sad. He turned to go back down the mountain, back to Baby, back to motels and leaving voicemails for Dad. He would turn north, visit Canada and see if he could find something to hunt. There was no home for him here – and he knew there wouldn’t be, his only welcome mat and place to rest was in the one place he wouldn’t dare go.  
The sun began to inch upwards, illuminating the sleeping forest, the tall barren trees, the mud-churned snow that was as close to a path as he had. He tried to focus on placing one foot in front of another, so tired. So tired. His shoulders hunched tight, duffel slung over one shoulder, Dad’s leather jacket’s collar was turned up to try to ward off the chill from the tips of his ears. His boots were a month past expired, but he hadn’t found a good pair to replace them, hadn’t really looked. Another day, another hunt. He would rest when he got to Baby. No, when he got to the nearest motel. Maybe he would drive – drive for a while, then find somewhere to crash. Or just pull over when he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. He cast one last look up at the moon, watched it fade into the sky as it brightened. It was still there during the day, if you knew where to look. And Dean did. He knew the moon and the stars and the highways of this fucked up country. One more day, Dean thought, just one more, then maybe I can go find Sammy. Or the next. Or the one after that. He squinted against the morning light, god, did the sun burn.


End file.
